The News Review:
- Post-transplant Combo Can Replace Toxic Immune-suppressing Drugs …
- Common allergy medicine to fight diabetes and obesity?
- Treating Patients as Partners by Way of Informed Consent
- Healthcare Reform Polling Data Misrepresented by National Media
Post-transplant Combo Can Replace Toxic Immune-suppressing Drugs …
Science Daily (press release)
The non-human primate research was conducted at the National Institutes of Health and Yerkes National Primate Research Center Emory University. The results are published in the July issue of Nature Medicine. The finding opens the door to less-toxic post-transplant treatment that could be administered once a week rather than a dizzying mound of pills every day says senior author Allan Kirk MD PhD scientific director of the Emory Transplant Center and a Georgia Research Alliance Eminent Scholar. "Both of the drugs used in this regimen are already used separately in humans thus a clinical trial could be developed quickly" Kirk notes. ne key ingredient in the combination is an experimental therapy called a costimulation blocker designed to interfere with the T cells that cause graft rejection without affecting other organs. Costimulation refers to one of two signals T cells need from other cells (antigen presenting cells) to become fully activated.
Common allergy medicine to fight diabetes and obesity?
Examiner.com
According to the Asthma and Allergy Foundation an estimated 50 million Americans also suffer from some sort of allergy. Could common over the counter allergy medication be the next treatment for metabolic conditions such as type 2 diabetes and obesity? Researchers from Harvard Medical School think so. A group of papers appearing in. Although chronic inflammation in the body has already been linked to heart disease cancer and Alzheimer’s disease this latest research gives us a better understanding of the relationship between inflammation and metabolic disorders.
Treating Patients as Partners by Way of Informed Consent
New York Times
But every so often despite what I believe are my best efforts I feel myself falling back on old familiar patterns habits I picked up not because someone taught me but because I never learned anything else. Like most doctors I bumbled through each consent on my own picking up certain phrases and dropping others through a sometimes painful and often awkward process of trial and error. This week I thought about those experiences and my conversation with Pete after reading.
Healthcare Reform Polling Data Misrepresented by National Media
CafeSentido.com
The story focuses on the apparent success opponents of healthcare reform have enjoyed in shaping the debate around a totally irrelevant nonexistent “plan” for “socialized medicine”. The Times report says “Americans are concerned that revamping the health care system would reduce the quality of their care increase their out-of-pocket health costs and tax bills and limit their options in choosing doctors treatments and tests the poll found”. There is an overt emphasis on the apparent confusion of respondents that raises a number of questions:1) Were respondents asked about socialized medicine which is not on the table a fact that suggests a “pushed” poll result reached via leading questions?2) Was any responsible determination attempted to judge how many respondents were ideologically biased or confused about whether the plan was “a government takeover”?3) Why did the Times choose to report there is a rise in “concern” about “socialized medicine” and that “pponents of the proposed health care overhaul have already spent $9 million on television advertisements raising concerns about it” without even one mention that in fact there is no planned “government takeover” or socialization of care?Why does the Times reporting on this poll ignore completely the fact that this confusion is unfounded? In fact the opposite is true of currently proposed reforms: Pres. bama has pledged the reforms will not “socialize” medicine there will be no role for bureaucrats in deciding care a public option will just be an affordable efficient alternative to balance the market and expand choice. He has given the responsibility for crafting the Senate’s version of reform to conservative Democrats whose views line up with fiscally conservative Republicans but the disinformation campaign has been persistent and accelerating nonetheless. The Times actually adopts the FX News strategy of delivering “balanced” representations of events (balanced but not necessarily factual) counting all claims as equally worthy of consideration despite some being patently false. There is a clear bias in the way this polling was reported toward the idea that opinion and fact are part of a single continuum of truth a framing of the issue that distorts both the meaning of public perceptions and the manner in which the poll plays out in subsequent reporting.
Related from Transitions-for-women: Part 2: Un-Spinning Healthcare Reform
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